Success Story Biesterfeld

Biesterfeld‘s migration from IBM TWS to BatchMan in no time

Initial Situation

Since 2005, BIT-SERV has been using IBM‘s Tivoli Workload Scheduler to schedule and monitor batch jobs. This was initially used in the area of CRM in-house developments as well as for SAP applications. After the jobs in the CRM environment were converted to internal operating system tools, the area of application was reduced exclusively to SAP applications.

At the beginning of 2019, BIT-SERV was faced with the decision to convert or replace the IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler to a current release in connection with the upcoming upgrade of the SAP system to ERP 6.0 EHP 8 and the underlying operating system Suse Linux Enterprise SLES 15. In this context, BIT-SERV was looking for alternative solutions for the processing of background processes in SAP. Since the scheduling of SAP batch jobs in the Tivoli Workload Scheduler had grown over many years, some of the jobs were not properly dependent on each other. This occasionally led to problems in the supported business processes and was to be optimized during the introduction of new job scheduling software.

Erfolgsgeschichten HONICO Kunden

Industry: Chemistry and raw materials

Use Case: Migration from IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler

Advantage: High transparency and diverse research options

Download (PDF)

Advantages HONICO Solution

  • Cross-Landscape Job Scheduling directly from SAP
  • Control of on-premise, cloud, or hybrid landscapes
  • Single Point of Control, Single Point of Monitoring
  • Simple and fast migration of the existing solution
  • Extended dependencies through parellelization and event control
  • Diverse research possibilities of relevant information for stakeholders

The Decision for BatchMan

The seamless integration of BatchMan with the SAP standard and the mature range of functions were the most important criteria for the purchase decision. BatchMan fulfilled all requirements, e.g. for determining the start time and periodicity of jobs and job chains, which were already used by BIT-SERV in the existing job scheduling solution.

Installation

The installation of BatchMan as part of a proof of concept went quickly and smoothly due to the installation of suitable transports. BIT-SERV received expert support from HONICO during installation and customizing. After 3 days of consulting, the software ran according to plan and the first critical jobs had already been scheduled. Nothing stood in the way of a purchase decision. In the following month, BIT-SERV employees gradually took over all jobs in order to deactivate them in the old job control system and start them via BatchMan.

Result and Outlook

The high transparency within BatchMan, e.g. through monitoring and the BatchMan library, offers BIT-SERV a wide range of research options. BIT-SERV employees in the SAP environment can now independently check all relevant information on „their“ jobs (scheduling, job variant, …).

During the migration, the opportunity was also taken to remove jobs that were no longer needed. In the next step, BIT-SERV will further optimize the job control by parallelization and corrected dependencies in BatchMan.

Biesterfeld's opinion

„From the presentation of BatchMan to the support during the implementation, I was impressed by the professional competence and commitment of the HONICO employees as well as the extensive functionality of BatchMan and its seamless integration into SAP.”

Sabine Haarich, Head of SAP Consulting

BIT-SERV GmbH

About Biesterfeld

Biesterfeld AG is the strategic holding company of the Biesterfeld Group, which has been active as a distribution and service company for 113 years. The group is one of the leading companies in chemical and plastics distribution with over 40 locations in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. Its business activities include a comprehensive service for the distribution of plastics, rubber, specialty chemicals and international trade.

As a full-service IT service provider, BIT-SERV GmbH, which belongs to Biesterfeld AG, specializes in the development, implementation and operation of business applications in the chemical, plastics, pharmaceutical and agricultural trade sectors. The focus is on SAP® ERP applications, CRM in-house developments, Internet / Intranet, e-commerce and system technology/data centers.